Rebuilding bottom end, advice wanted.

How out of limits can a Ducati cylinder be and still be Repaired by these People?

 

Fair enough, that is precisely what happened, and as soon as I realized what had happened I replaced the headers. Unfortunately, it was already way too late.

Her motor was toast before I ever got her, they were clever in the cover up and I wasn't thorough enough in my inspection of the car.

So now it's just time to pick up the pieces and make it right. Nothing so catastrophic that I can't get her running better than ever. The heads and block are not warped. I need to replace 13 valves and 40 guides. Every single guide was out of spec.

I am considering switching to Carillo rods and some new pistons. I know that some consider the Carillo rods better than the stock units with regard to reliability. I hope to get SCE to make some copper head gaskets for the car as well. I would like to put valve reliefs into the pistons to reduce the chance of bending valves, even though I would lose a tiny bit of compression.





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While the 355 rods have been known for some trouble they are not terrible. They are however Titanium and the crank counterweighting is designed for rods of that weight. You can get Carilllos but they will need to be titanium and not steel.



As far as valve clearance goes the 355 has a bunch. The valves are small, at a narrow angle and are not lifted too high. A lot of low performance motors have a lot less clearance than a 355.

 

^^^Good points.

Also, why do you want copper head gaskets? I won't use them.

 

Depending on what you are doing, copper head gaskets have some advantages, most importantly that they are reusable, seal well when installed properly with o-rings, and just always been reliable for me on my race motors.

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True, the valves barely kissed the slugs, but bent anyway.

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Thanks, I will check with Carillo to make sure that I get the right ones. They have a dedicated part, so hopefully it is the right material.

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Hi, do you know how many miles were on the belt before it broke?

 

Your experience is different than mine. I've always had the best luck with MLS.

Not sure there could be any benefit to o-ring/receiver groove/copper gasket on an F129B but that is just my opinion

 

Interestingly, according to the block, my motor is an F129C.

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Actually it is an unmitigated disaster. Because the liners stand proud of the deck the head gasket needs to be soft enough to allow the liner tops to imbed in the gasket and still have enough surface pressure to seal the water and oil passages. If you torque the head down on such an uneven surface it distorts the head to such a degree you have massive compression and coolant leaks and even the chambers distort to the point there will be large amounts of leakage past the valves.

 

Actually it is an unmitigated disaster. Because the liners stand proud of the deck the head gasket needs to be soft enough to allow the liner tops to imbed in the gasket and still have enough surface pressure to seal the water and oil passages. If you torque the head down on such an uneven surface that a solid gasket creates it distorts the head to such a degree you have massive compression and coolant leaks and even the chambers distort to the point there will be large amounts of leakage past the valves.



Markphd....quit trying to reengineer a car that requires no reengineering. Ferrari has a pretty good handle on making cars and if you just fix it correctly and not apply poorly thought out ideas it will serve you well.

 

Actually, isn't the key word "engineer?" One problem I see is people using product "out of context" just as you say. O-ringed, organic fiber gasket and MLS all have different block to head requirements. If those are met any method can work if engineered properly. Then there is the second problem, "were all the issues to make a product work taken into account?" With that said I still never understood why all the reported leak problems with OEM Elring gaskets on rebuilt Ferrari motors. It seems like that old technology should have been a slam dunk.

 

Sounds like all good reasons to use the oem gasket!

 

No offense, because you know far more about Ferrari motors than I do, but if this car is so well engineered, why did countless F355 eat themselves (in a variety of ways) before ever reaching 30k miles. I suspect that it is either poor engineering or poor quality control, both of which are Ferrari issues not ownership/maintenance issues. No matter how you slice it, the number of failed motors reflects a problem that is independent of a number of factors and is common to this model.

That said, I am likely going down the wrong path, and there is nothing wrong with the factory head gasket (given the low number of F355 head gasket failures, I am inclined to agree). I respect your opinion and believe that you are likely correct. I should just use the factory gasket and be done with it.

I would ask what should we do when Elring gaskets are no longer available (Elring shows them as discontinued per one recent inquiry)? What would you suggest Rifledriver, because I don't have any better answer?

Right now, I am going to use the factory gaskets. I ordered a set and have them in my hands. Thanks for the advice.

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I would guess that it comes down to assembly techniques and as Rifledriver said, "distortion" of the block head interface. Which can be controlled by slowly and evenly torquing the heads down.

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The motor had 2 problems, poor quality valve guides and poor quality exhaust manifolds. Both were addressed by Ferrari during production. Many cars produced have had both those issues and more but since Ferrari production numbers are so low it takes them much longer to see a pattern of failure and address it. Their response is often too slow and not very good, that is partially, even mostly true in this case but does not change the fact that industry wide they are not uncommon and does not change the fact that overall it was well engineered. It also does not change the fact that the issues are known, solutions are known and changing known good design aspects are not always a good idea.

 

Those aren't the two only things, come on now, I could go on and on. Everything Hill Engineering makes for the car - timing belt bearing, clutch throw out bearing, even the stupid door handle. Not to mention the self clearance get coolant pump. You don't even want to know how many shavings I found in the transmission heat exchanger.

No, there are a lot of poorly engineered parts of the car. Perhaps I am being a bit harsh, because I am comparing 20+ year old engineering with that which is available today. Fact is that there are more than a few problems with the vehicle that benefit from a bit of attention. You can think that there are only two main issues but I consider high failure components like tensioner bearings and coolant pumps pretty serious concerns as well.

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So why not make parts that work correctly? I'm pretty sure you can have a tensioner machined out of aluminum for a 100$ and put a good long life bearing in it. Not really that big of a deal... Water pumps well I'm not gonna lie the do suck. But you can rebuild your factory water pump in an afternoon and it will fit much better that one that wasint on the car already

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I guess your PHD did not require reading skill.

Reread the post.

The Hill timing belt bearing fixes nothing. It is an alternative only.

 

Or perhaps it's all the vicodin I am on due to the surgery I recently went through. Enough said.

My Ph.D. was obviously color by number.

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You should let rifledriver rebuild your engine.

You're going to mess it up.

You have no faith.

Ferrari have been building engines since the 1940's
Rebuild them right with oem parts...it'll be fine

 

If I mess it up, Rifledriver would be one of first persons I would want to build me a motor. Now, if you are offering to cut the check for him to rebuild it, I will be glad to step aside and let him do the work.

Talk about no faith, lol, I am going to mess it up... That's a pretty strong prediction. Not that I am risking messing it up, but flat out will mess it up. Care to make a wager? I am willing to bet a pint of your favorite on draft brew that I don't "mess it up".

Feel free to operationally define what constitutes "messing it up". I may take a different approach than some people, but I have never had a problem with my race motors surviving (and I have built more than a few). I am not worried about messing it up.



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So speaking of Ferrari parts not needing to be "re-engineered", I disassembled the header clamshell today. Actually, despite failure, I don't blame the header design and I am not sure that the metallurgy was a problem either, as the steel seems to be of uniformly high quality.

I do believe that it failed for two reasons. Inadequate gas flow (likely due to a failed catalytic converter) and an unsympathetic owner who just didn't give a **** what happened to the car.

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If you look at the tubes, you can see how each are in various stages of failure. I am going to rebuild them myself. Yes, please go ahead and predict how I will **** that up too.



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Hm

It is always that number 2 cylinder that goes.